The stagehands’ strike has left Broadway dark for the past few days, but the stars have been shining on the “stage” at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, where Securing New Ground is underway. The day-and-a-half conference, which covers the business of security, has featured its own security industry “stars” as guest speakers, such as ADT Security’s John Koch, Siemens Building Technologies’ George West, CIT’s Gretchen Gordon, and IBM’s Julie Donahue.

Lehman Brothers’ Jeff Kessler addressed the conference’s 300 or so attendees this morning on the topic of Wall Street Insights. He said there is a tremendous amount of interest in security companies, and he is positive about the security industry this year.

 

“We believe that background screening, data analytics, biometrics, networked video and sensor technologies will be major security investment themes over the next three to five years,” Kessler said.

 

Kessler gave a thumbs-up to systems integrators, saying that the IT IQ of the security industry is going up and he thinks integrators are moving in the right direction by hiring IT people – “young IT people” – to allow them be more competitive on projects.